SHOULD I PARTITION? NEW PC 160GB HARD DRIVE WINXP

Help! have just bought new Axis KD3 (Athlon 64) from Evesham with 160GB hard drive. My old PC has C drive 2GB (aarg) with remainder on D. Is it a good idea to partition the new hard drive before I start loading data/programs on? and if so, how? there is loads of stuff about FAT 16, 32 and NTFS and I dont know which way to turn. Obviously easier to just leave it alone with software installed, but then if I want to do it later it will be a nightmare! So, folks, pros and cons please....

Thanks for responding so fast! Powerless especially, that is helpful as it sounds as though I don't have to reinstall xp.

So far, reasons for partitioning from friends:

*good housekeeping, keep data and programs and OS separate*if you have to reinstall OS later you do not have to do programs and data as well*can use one drive to back up others to (until it fills up!)*can defrag one bit of the large drive at a time

Against:

*why change original OEM configuration, surely they know what they are doing?*no limit on "C" by keeping one big drive

will have a go at disk management! Oh, will I have to rename CD and DVD drives?

The drive as it is now will not allow itself to be partitoned - XP will put a stop to that.

To be able to create partitions using disc management you would need to reinstall XP. XP does not have the ability to split, resize exsisting partitions. There is Partition Magic that can do this but it costs.

You can change drive letters to optical drive as well partitions in disk managment.

A number of pssible reasons I suppose. I have a small partiton (5gb)on the main drive just to run Photoshop's scratch disc. I also have a second 60gb drive split into three. One holds Ghost backups, another DriveImage. (Paranoid am I not). The remainder for general storage.